ko this is it! Debugging Cg doesnt quite make sense to me... i created a fragment program that takes in a "-debug" argument, and a vertex program that doesnt. next my simple fragment code:

struct Fragment
{
	fixed4 position  : POSITION;
	fixed4 color     : COLOR0;
};
struct Pixel
{
	float4 color : COLOR;
};
Pixel MyFragmentProgram(Fragment IN)
{
	Pixel OUT;
	debug(float4(0.5f,1.0f,0.6f,0.3f));
	
	OUT.color = IN.color;
	return OUT;
}

ok, i run in debug VC++.net mode, and saw a black screen. so i tried retrieving the color values in both the front and back buffers, but to no avail, am i getting the right results...

float data[4]; 
glReadBuffer(GL_BACK);//or front

glReadPixels(10, 10, 1, 1, GL_RGBA, GL_FLOAT, data); 
Debug::WriteLine(data[0].ToString());
Debug::WriteLine(data[1].ToString());
Debug::WriteLine(data[2].ToString());
Debug::WriteLine(data[3].ToString());

If anyone could offer some help here, would be most appreciated. THX! Edwinz